Nowadays, the focal point for IT operational success lies not so much in just choosing the software and services mixture, but also in the management and support of these systems and implementations and the SLAs as an ecosystem, and that ecosystem must be managed comprehensively with flexibility and for the long-term.

More than ever, finger pointing on who is accountable or responsible amid a diverse and fast-moving software environment cannot be allowed, not in an Instant-On Enterprise.

Even before such models as cloud computing models are added to the mix, IT needs to get a handle on supporting these multiparty software instances, along with the complex integrations and custom extensions across and between them.

Of course, more of these workloads are supported these days by virtualized containers and by a service-level commitment. So, who are you going to call when things go wrong or when maintenance needs to affect one element of the stack without hosing the rest? How do you manage at the service level agreement (SLA), or multiple SLA, level?

Not only does IT need a one-hand-to-shake value on comprehensive support more than ever, but IT departments may need to increasingly opt to outsource more of the routine operational tasks and software support to free up their IT knowledge resources and experts for transformation, security initiatives, and new business growth projects.

Consequently, we've tapped an executive from HP Software to examine an expanding set of new HP Premier Services designed to combine custom software support and consulting expertise to better deliver managed support outcomes across entire software implementations.